"Reasons of Conscience: The Bioethics Debate in Germany provides an extraordinary example of anthropology’s capacity to not only document and critique social worlds but also to open up a space for political and philosophical mediations."

Petra Rethmann | American Ethnologist

“Stefan Sperling’s Reasons of Conscience is a highly illuminating account of the current state of consciousness about conscience in post-unification Germany. Concerned with the ethical relations between science and society, the book takes up an eclectic mix of evidence, including legal theories, concepts, metaphors, architectural design, the use of history and historiography, personal impressions, and public accounts of the prosecution of East German border guards and of debates about mandatory counseling for abortions. At its center is the work of a federal commission concerned with bioethics, specifically the regulation of embryonic stem cells. In distilling the specific way in which ethics gets defined in a democratic public sphere that prizes participation and transparency, it offers a fascinating journey through the reasoning about conscience in contemporary Germany.”

John Borneman, Princeton University

“Reasons of Conscience is a dazzling study of the intersection of science, political life, and historical memory in modern Germany. It traces the public debate surrounding the legal, moral, and ethical ramifications of stem cell research in a country acutely sensitized to avoiding the repetition of the industrialization and eugenic manipulation of life in its past. Stefan Sperling explores in stunning ethnographic detail how German political life interweaves matters of ethics, citizenship, and conscience, from the everyday practices and knowledge of ethics commissions, scientific research, and citizen conferences, to the complexities of public and parliamentary debate. Without a doubt, this is the finest ethnography of German political life and of the inner workings of the German state that I have read—it is brilliantly attentive both to the cultural and historical legacies that shape German politics as well as to the Realpolitik and complex alliances of its parliamentary statecraft.”

Dominic Boyer, Rice University